Kun mountain

Meaning

Kun, 坤 kūn, is the middle mountain of the south-west (SW2): the fifteen degrees from 217.5° to 232.5°, centred on 225°, the exact south-west. It takes its name from the trigram Kun ☷, the Earth, which holds the whole south-west in the Later Heaven order: these are its middle fifteen degrees, the corner itself.

Kun is the south-west itself, 225°, the middle of the corner, named after the trigram of the earth, which receives, carries and nourishes. Its trigram holds the whole south-west in the Later Heaven order, and the mountain is its heart, between the Goat’s Wei and the Monkey’s Shen. A home facing Kun looks due south-west and sits in Gen, the north-east: a Gen house, the mountain at its back and the open earth ahead.

For the Flying Stars Kun is the south-west’s Heaven dragon and counts as yang, like Shen beside it, so the two share their main chart, the mirror of Gen’s across the compass. Built in Period 8, a home facing Kun had the reversed chart, softened by the parent string, with a 5 flying forward that repeats the Lo Shu; built in Period 9, it has both of the period’s stars at the back. The prosperous chart comes to it in Periods 4 and 6.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 217.5° and 232.5° faces Kun, and sits in Gen, NE2: a Gen house of the West group. The Home lens tints Kun on its dial and draws Gen dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 217.5° or 232.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 217.5° the line towards Wei, inside the south-west; at 232.5° the line towards Shen, inside the south-west.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Kun has the formation Double stars at the sitting; built in Period 8, the formations Reversed, Parent string and Repeated chart.
• The year: Kun is never the Grand Duke’s mountain nor the Year Breaker’s, which are branches, nor one of the Three Killings, which fall in the four cardinal directions. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the south-west, in 2028 and 2037.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Kun goes with the Start of Autumn, the Sun at 135°, halfway through Leo in the Western zodiac.
• In Vastu Shastra the south-west is the heaviest corner, kept for the main bedroom and for what is heavy, solid and closed; on the Mediterranean rose it is the libeccio, the wind from Libya.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua says that service is done in Kun, 致役乎坤: the earth that receives everything and makes it grow, at the south-west, where summer turns towards harvest. On the ring of terms Kun carries the start of autumn, across the compass from Gen’s start of spring, so that the Gen–Kun axis of the luopan joins the year’s two great turns, sowing and harvest.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds the mountain a home faces from its magnetic facing, among 24 mountains of 15° counted from Ren at 337.5°: Kun takes every facing from 217.5° up to 232.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Gen. For the Flying Stars, Kun is the middle mountain of a corner palace, of the group the classics call the Heaven dragon, and so counts as yang: when the stars look to it for their flight, it sends a star forward. Its replacement star, from the classical verse, is 2, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences